A pros-and-cons look at nursing through the ages

Sometimes I get really annoyed with my job. Staffing’s tight, hours are long, patients are sicker every time I turn around and there always seems to be a new crop of residents to deal with. When I get really frustrated and start thinking of going back to waiting tables, I read historical accounts of nursing. Then I feel better. Taking the long view, I don’t have that much to complain about.

PREHISTORIC NURSING PROS: Not a lot of drugs to memorize. Pretty much everybody ate organic and breathed clean air. Industrial accidents unknown. CONS: Trepanning, red ochre and rapid amputation were the state of the art. Nobody lived much past 30. Large, hungry animals were a hazard on daily rounds.

ANCIENT GREEK AND ROMAN NURSING PROS: Observation and documentation were beginning to make a difference in treatment. Ethical considerations quantified by Hippocrates. Close collaboration between medical science and oracles. CONS: Threat of execution of a high-ranking patient didn’t get better. Pigeon’s tongues considered a viable treatment. Lion bites a real concern in some patient populations.

OLD/NEW WORLD NURSING, 16th THROUGH 18th CENTURIES PROS: Professionalization of midwifery and wise-women led to greater social standing for female medical people. New discoveries in physiology and anatomy. General boom in European economies. CONS: Humours, bleeding, plague, smallpox, war and that whole being-burned-as-a-witch thing.

AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN NURSING, 1900-1920 PROS: New developments in trauma care and reconstructive surgery. CONS: War that led to new developments in trauma care and reconstructive surgery.

AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN NURSING, 1920-1950 PROS: Increased independence of nursing professionals thanks to Second World War. Development of antibiotics. Cool armed services uniforms. CONS: Second World War. Starched skirts and caps. POW camps.

Agatha Lellis is a nurse whose coffee is brought to her every morning by a chipmunk. Bluebirds help her to dress, and small woodland creatures sing her to sleep each night. She writes a monthly advice column, "Ask Aunt Agatha," here on Scrubs; you can send her questions to be answered at askauntieaggie@gmail.com. By Agatha Lellis